Now Open: A Pickle Cafe in Elizabeth Bay

Pickled serves bold breakfasts and toasties. You can guess the star ingredient.

Photography: Jiwon Kim

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Photography: Jiwon Kim

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Photography: Jiwon Kim

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Published on 05 September 2016

by Molly Urquhart

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Of all the things in the world to design a cafe around, why pickles? For life partners and co-owners Andrew Doenicke and Bronwyn Coker, it’s all that matters.

While many consider the pickled cucumber to be the only unhappy part of a Happy Meal, this duo grew up with a genuine appreciation for fermented food. They took up pickling at home before realising their dream to open a toasted-sandwich cafe in Elizabeth Bay.

Coker, a long-term inner-westerner, explains, “We wanted to bring a bit of the inner west to the inner east, something a bit grittier and coffee focused.” To that end, they’ve sourced their beans from DC Coffee, also serving loose-leaf Numi Tea.

The menu revolves around seasonal fruit and vegetables, all pickled in-house. Breakfast favourites include eggs (scrambled or poached) on toast with peas, pickled fennel, crispy bacon, rocket and parmesan. The Baker’s Brekky is a hunk of crusty Brickfields bread served with a generous knob of Pepe Saya butter.

The toasties are available all day and will rotate regularly. For now, there’s a ploughman’s toastie with thick-cut smoked ham, cheddar, dill, pickles, pickled onion and seeded mustard. There’s also gruyère with pickled radish, beetroot, rocket and aioli. The classic Reuben sandwich is a permanent fixture.

The couple is also motivated about sustainability. They can sleep at night knowing their pickling practice has minimal waste. “There’s no reason to discard produce that is no longer ‘the freshest’ or ‘prettiest’,” says Coker.